Life in 600 words or less: In 1913, the publisher Conde Nast had a problem. He'd recently acquired a magazine called Dress, bought the name of another one, Vanity Fair, and combined the two into Dress & Vanity Fair. Ungainly as its title was, that wasn't the magazine's only failing. It also lacked a clear editorial direction, or at least one that satisfied Nast. He decided to consult his friend Frank Crowninshield on the matter.

The Paris-born
son of an old New England family, Crowninshield had held editorial posts at several well-regarded but now mostly forgotten magazines, including The Bookman, The Century, The
Metropolitan Magazine, and Munsey’s. “There is no magazine that is read by the people
you meet at lunches and dinners,” he reportedly told Nast. “Your
magazine should cover the things people talk about—parties, the arts, sports,
theater, humor, and so forth.” Soon Crowninshield had the job of supplying the
luster that Dress & Vanity Fair lacked. Among his first moves was tightening its title to Vanity Fair.

In his first issue, dated March 1914, Crowninshield laid out
his mission: “Vanity Fair has but two major articles in its editorial creed:
first, to believe in the progress and promise of American life, and, second, to
chronicle that progress cheerfully, truthfully, and entertainingly.” He would
stick remarkably close to that mission for the next two decades, until the
Depression ended Vanity Fair’s initial run in 1936 and both it and Crowninshield were
absorbed by the more prosperous Conde Nast title, Vogue.

But it must have been fun while it lasted. During Crowninshield’s
tenure, the magazine gave a start or at least an early boost to a long list of 20th century worthies. Its writers included Noel
Coward, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Wolfe, Getrude Stein, e.e. cummings, and even
Harry Houdini. Among its artists were Matisse and Picasso. Among its
photographers, Edward Steichen and Cecil Beaton. Crowninshield’s junior
staffers tended to go on to greater glory, as well; they included the humorists
Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, the playwright Robert Sherwood, and the ambitious Clare
Boothe before she became Clare Boothe Luce.

Though his editorial tastes may have tended toward the avant
garde, Crowninshield was, by most accounts, an old-fashioned
gentleman in his very public private life. In its obituary, The New York Times offered him this flowery tribute: “Known to his thousands of friends as Crownie, New York’s most
extraordinary bon vivant was handsome, tall, and carried himself with Old World
dignity. Given to wearing boutonnieres in both day and evening clothes Mr.
Crowninshield was himself a flower in the buttonhole of a large segment of the
social life of New York.”

Even Crowninshield’s rejection letters were legendary for their
courtliness. The writer Dickson Hartwell recalled that they “were so
complimentary that they usually had to be read twice to discover whether he was
making a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize or expressing regret.” Edna Woolman
Chase, the longtime Vogue editor who was both Crowninshield’s peer and
occasional nemesis, wrote that he “rarely saw face to face a contributor
whose work he didn't want; his heart was too tender. Instead he
dictated charming little notes flattering the writer on the perception and
sensitivity of his piece, his wit and freshness of phrasing, and suggested
he send it to the Ladies' Home Journal.”

At his death in 1947, at age 75, Crowninshield was an
editorial adviser to Conde Nast Publications, where his contributions
apparently included the suggestion to spell Glamour magazine with a “u,” rather than
the less-glamorous “Glamor.”

For more: Crowninshield seems never to have published a
memoir or to have been the subject of a book-length biography, both of which
are unfortunate. The closest thing may be a two-part New Yorker profile in September 1942. Crowninshield does, however, figure in many biographies of his celebrated
associates, including Caroline Seebohm’s “The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life and
Times of Conde Nast” (1982), Marion Meade’s “Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is
This?” (1988), and Billy Altman’s “Laughter’s Gentle Soul: The Life and Times
of Robert Benchley” (1997). He also makes a brief but memorable appearance in “A Good Life,”
the autobiography of Ben Bradlee, the former Washington Post executive editor,
whose grandmother was Crowninshield’s sister.For a sample of Vanity Fair’s content during the
Crowninshield era, there’s “Vanity Fair: A Cavalcade of the 1920s and 1930s,”
edited by Cleveland Amory and Frederic Bradlee (1960). — Greg Daugherty, 9/10